AKSchaefer – Life in Motion

Month: December 2009

  • DIY 4-Bay UHF Antenna

    I decided to try and make a TV antenna from many different online resources I have read. The Antenna I made was a 4-Bay bow-tie antenna. You will see this called a coat hanger antenna also, because you can make the whisk out of coat hangers easily. I first read about this antenna from this website, but I am sure its been on the internet long before this. My goal was to get some vhf channels in ( channel 7,9 and 12) , and since this antenna is mostly UHF, I found some modified designs by mclapp that help produce a small gain in the VHF-HI range.

    http://www.frontiernet.net/~mclapp/Antennas/4baystuff/4%20bay%209%201-2%20element%20layout.pdf
    http://www.frontiernet.net/~mclapp/Antennas/4baystuff/4%20bay%209%20inch%20phase%20line.pdf

    Unfortunately the antenna didn’t work as well as I was hoping it would. The antenna worked for 12,51 (2-1), and 20 in my area, even though there is channel 48 and 28 which it was missing. My guess is I did something wrong.

    The antenna was fairly cheap to build from all store bought parts. It was under 9 dollars from my local Menards.
    Wire ( I used 14 gauge galvanized steel)
    #6 wood screws
    #6 washers
    Board from the scrap bin ( 15 cents !!! )
    Balun – Converts it over to coaxial cable.

    If anyone has any suggestions on why it doesnt work as well as my DB2, let me know 🙂

    I would like to note: I am not an antenna expert, just a beginner. Just going off what I have read online for information.

  • Seven Remix XP

    So I was unhappy about windows 7 and I didnt feel like messing around with it to get it to work properly with my older PC, so I seen on lifehacker an article called Make Windows XP look like Windows 7. I thought I would try it out, and so far I really like it, it gives xp a new look. In the end the main reason I like vista and 7 is due to the graphics user interface anyway, but due to lack of hardware, I am going to run xp.

    My Desktop Screenshot

    If your interested in check out the mod, Check out the original website at http://niwradsoft.blogspot.com/2009/09/seven-remix-xp-231.html which is in spanish.

    Here is the google translate link
    http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fniwradsoft.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F09%2Fseven-remix-xp-231.html&sl=es&tl=en

    My wallpaper I found is from the game EVE Online which I dont play, but the art reminds me of Battlestar Gallatica and Stargate

    Widescreen 1920×1080

    Full Screen 1600×1200

  • Boxee Box

    So Boxee and D-Link are coming out with a new piece of hardware called the Boxee Box. Overall it looks really neat, it has a nice design, includes the major outputs needed for a mediacenter ( assuming you have an open HDMI port), and looks to be small according to boxees blog post.

    If boxee would like to send me one, I would be more then happy to review it 😉

    Hopefully its not to expensive and its a big hit, boxee has a great future!

  • Insignia NS-DV720P Video Testing

    Original price the camera is $129.99 but we bought it on black friday sale at bestbuy.com for $69.99. I was hoping for better quality being an HD camera, but its hard to tell due to no natural lighting. Overall its easy to get the videos off the camera. It stores the videos on the 8GB SD card I bought for it. The videos copy off the device quickly unlike my blackberry, but none of my videos were over 1 or 2 minutes. The photo camera on it wasnt very good in the non-natural light. I will try to post some videos and pictures when I can take it outside.  Due to its cheap price I give it a 3.0 out of 5.